Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;454290Dear lord...Worse than 4E??
:eek:

Depends how you look at it.

D&D for me is about exploration of the unknown: it's about travelling through the wilderness, the underdark, the planes, going down the stairs to the dungeon and back with some loot, you know. D&D.

For that purpose, 2e is arguably worse than 4e, because 4e does focus on a certain conception of what it means to go to the dungeon and so on: it's all about the encounter format, the tactical grid challenge, whatnot. There's a focus the game has that 2e doesn't have.

2e tries to be vanilla heroic ren-fair role-playing. The thing is, there are about a zillion different Fantasy RPGs that can do that way better than 2e does, depending on what you want.

However, if you're looking at stuff like the feel of the game, I'll prefer the ren-fair heroic vibe of core 2e to the uber-powahz super-kewl Exalted characters but with d20 mechanics of 4e.

So it really depends how you look at it, to me. In the end, I'm left dissatisfied by both iterations of the game, for different reasons. One doesn't "do" anything D&D, and the other does everything "wrong" to me.

2e is the high watermark of fantasy roleplaying.

Best settings. Best artwork. Best rules.

Quote from: 1989;4543262e is the high watermark of fantasy roleplaying.

Best settings. Best artwork. Best rules.

LOL Dude! I was waiting for you to show up!

Quote from: Benoist;454297Depends how you look at it.

D&D for me is about exploration of the unknown: it's about travelling through the wilderness, the underdark, the planes, going down the stairs to the dungeon and back with some loot, you know. D&D.

For that purpose, 2e is arguably worse than 4e, because 4e does focus on a certain conception of what it means to go to the dungeon and so on: it's all about the encounter format, the tactical grid challenge, whatnot. There's a focus the game has that 2e doesn't have.

2e tries to be vanilla heroic ren-fair role-playing. The thing is, there are about a zillion different Fantasy RPGs that can do that way better than 2e does, depending on what you want.

However, if you're looking at stuff like the feel of the game, I'll prefer the ren-fair heroic vibe of core 2e to the uber-powahz super-kewl Exalted characters but with d20 mechanics of 4e.

So it really depends how you look at it, to me. In the end, I'm left dissatisfied by both iterations of the game, for different reasons. One doesn't "do" anything D&D, and the other does everything "wrong" to me.

Well, I was mostly just surprised than JA would say that, since judging by his essays he really doesn't like 4e overmuch...
I actually found your post here weirdly enlightening, Benoist. Maybe one of the reasons I like 2E is that I don't really like alot of the other  alternatives particularly - BRP or GURPS, for instance...

For my part I would have said that D&D is the biggest RPG with the largest market share - to keep that it should try to be all things to all people. So I don't mind that its scope is sort of unfocussed, even if traditionally it was more about dungeon-delving. I didn't really find 3e to be a 'return to the dungeon', either, so I didn't approve of 4e's 'points of light' & dungeon focus either. But YMMV.

For me one of things that adds to 2E's charm...which maybe someone who liked other systems more wouldn't agree with...is that the settings actually sync up with the system. For me it doesn't make much sense to steal a setting and run it with something other than 2e...of the other D&D variants for instance I've tried running Dark Sun with 3e and couldn't get it work since the PCs were too strong to make harsh survival work as a theme. Though Planescape works OK with 3e.

Quote from: 1989;454326Best settings. Best artwork. Best rules.

Two out of three of the men have mullets and I bet beneath the hood the other guy has a mullet too.

Quote from: Cole;454331Two out of three of the men have mullets and I bet beneath the hood the other guy has a mullet too.

They're gonna throw that dragon in the trunk of their Camaro and crank up some Dio on the way back to the inn.

Quote from: Benoist;454328LOL Dude! I was waiting for you to show up!

Haha. You know it.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;454290Dear lord...Worse than 4E??
:eek:

I thought we were just talking about editions of D&D.

*zing!*

More seriously: Yeah, actually. I think if you gave me a choice between 4E and 2E, I'd probably pick 4E. I think I can probably kitbash 4E into something acceptable by simply (a) ignoring a lot of stuff and (b) instituting the house rule that you have to tell me how you're doing something.

2E would take considerably more effort.

If there's one thing running OD&D over the past couple years has taught me, it's that unified resolution mechanics are fundamentally useful tools and trying to GM without them is needless masochism.

(OD&D worked really well when I using it in the limited capacity of running OD&D-style dungeons with it. The minute I tried to step outside of that narrow scope, however, I was painfully reminded how inflexible those rules could be. The number of times over the past few months I've wanted to be able to simply say, "Make a Reflex save." instead of trying to cobble together some fiat ruling is painful.)

Quote from: 1989;454336They're gonna throw that dragon in the trunk of their Camaro and crank up some Dio on the way back to the inn.

They're gonna throw that dragon in the back of their Volvo 200 series and listen to some Enya on the way back to the community center.

Quote from: Cole;454340They're gonna throw that dragon in the back of their Volvo 200 series and listen to some Enya on the way back to the community center.

Hah! That sounds about right.

On second thought, they're probably at least trying to walk the walk, even if they can't quite carry it off: maybe a Geo Storm with Winger in the cassette deck.

Original D&D:



AD&D:



aaaand 2nd edition AD&D:

So it's decided then. 2e is officially the best edition of D&D.

Well, after this discussion I definitely intend to run a 1E campaign when my   2E game is done.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;4542862nd Edition offers nothing of unique or notable value.

I couldn't disagree with you more.  You see, a lot of what you describe 1e having that 2e lacks is something that almost completely disinterests me.  It seemed like there was a lot of people playing 1e back in the day who also didn't care for such things, which is why they probably changed it in 2e.  That's probably the story of most every edition of D&D:  a new crowd comes in, adapts the existing rules to do what they like and ignore what they don't like, then this crowd gets a chance to make their own edition and make their changes "official".  Basic D&D was Holmes' interpretation of OD&D, BECMI was Mentzer's interpretation of Holme's Basic, 2e was Cook's interpretation of 1e, 3e was a bunch of other people's interpretations of probably all editions up until that point.  Heck, whole new games were founded under this principle, such as Rolemaster and Runequest.  Of course, for every edition there are those of the "old crowd" who actually liked the majority of what was already there, and so of course are at odds with this "new crowd" coming in and changing everything.

And I for one liked the interpretations of D&D made in 2e.  Of course these interpretations are not for everyone, but the appeal of D&D to me is just how many different interpretations can be made of the game.  Unfortunately, this appeal is also a repulsion since it makes such nice fuel for edition wars. :\

QuoteBut it's 2011 now, so what's the point of not just going with the superior clean-up of the rules in 3E?

And yet I can't stand 3E.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;454388Well, after this discussion I definitely intend to run a 1E campaign when my   2E game is done.

Awesome.